On June 4, 1989, at least 180,000 troops and armored vehicles fired into the crowds of mostly students packed in Tiananmen Square and drove over them, killing several thousand people.

This tragic moment and the political fallout impacted the spread of the Gospel through China in ways that still echo today.

Kurt Rovenstine, President of Bibles for China says, “It did allow there to be some opportunity…. From 1990 to 2000, there was an opening up of opportunity for Christian ministries to come in and do some work.

Tiananmen Square protests before the massacre, June 2, 1989. (Photo courtesy of Jiří Tondl (Blow up) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68125236)

“Now, it was still China and there were still some restrictions and some things that couldn’t be done. But there seemed to be this sense of growth towards freedoms that China hadn’t encountered for quite some time. I think you could look at Tiananmen as a real watershed for that.”

Despite these opportunities, operating under a Communist regime presents ongoing challenges. Rovenstine explains, “It’s walking that line. It’s expressing our desire to answer to a higher authority.” Bibles for China supports the registered Church in navigating these complexities, enabling them to represent Christ faithfully.

Looking forward, Rovenstine emphasizes the enduring resilience of Chinese Christians: “You don’t answer ultimately to the Communist government. You answer ultimately to God!”

As Christians in China continue to persevere and spread the Gospel amidst government restrictions, prayers for wisdom and courage are crucial.

Please pray for the people of China to know lasting hope in Jesus Christ. Ask the Holy Spirit to grant believers insight and creativity in effectively spreading the Gospel while honoring both earthly authorities and God’s ultimate authority.

Header photo of Tiananmen Square in 2016. (Photo courtesy of RomanM82 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=105058975)

The protests began after an apartment fire killed 10 people under strict lockdown. Videos of the fire appear to show firefighters taking more time to reach the victims due to the COVID-19 restrictions. The fire happened in the Western region of Xinjiang, in a city that had been locked down for over 100 days.

Kurt Rovenstine with Bibles for China says, “They just want to have some freedom to live life, even in the context of a communist government. Whether it’s religious freedom, the ability to visit family, to go out for a meal, or whatever the case may be, it reached a tipping point. And so people have hit the streets.”

CCP response

These are the most widespread demonstrations in China since the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

So far, the police have responded by detaining people and heavily patrolling the streets of major cities. Officials have also sent home university students, fearing they would stoke even more unrest.

Rovenstine says the protests could move China in a positive direction. “But as Tiananmen showed us, there’s also the opportunity for a response that is swift and harsh. So we’ll have to wait and see.”

“But the exciting thing for me as an observer of things going on in China is the opportunity for the Church to be a voice in all of this.”

Pray Chinese Christians will speak into the lives of those looking for significant change.

Pray also that Chinese leaders would not respond with violence but would listen to and understand their people. Rovenstine says, “National leaders have to do more than be iron-fisted. They have to live in a global economy. We no longer live in a world where information can be completely monitored. We are a connected global people.”

The header photo shows students holding a memorial for those who died in the apartment fire. (Photo courtesy of Date20221127, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Meanwhile, protestors plan to march in Hong Kong despite a police ban, labeling October 1 a “Day of Grief.” China recently increased its paramilitary forces in the semiautonomous region following weeks of civil unrest, Reuters reports.

Asian Access board member Francis Tsui says religious freedom thrives in Hong Kong now, but that could change. “I want the global Church to pray for Christians in China, in Hong Kong,” he requests.

“It is not about what we see. It is about what we see God has been doing.”

Learn how Asian Access trains local leaders here.

Protests divide Hong Kong

This summer, protests began following a controversial extradition law and its subsequent withdrawal. Demonstrators don’t want Chinese interference; they favor Hong Kong’s autonomy, Tsui explains.

However, some residents see no other option and think Hong Kong should continue under China’s sovereignty.

“What we are seeing, all that has transpired in the last 18 weeks, is a reflection of the divided attitude. It’s a matter of trust and fear of China.”

Regarding religious freedom, China has been increasing pressure on believers over the past year. Read our coverage here. However, the “one country, two systems” policy allows believers and churches to operate freely in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong protests in July 2019.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

“In light of all [the restrictions] inside China, there is a sense of threat,” Tsui says. “But… as long as the ‘one country, two systems’ can still be working, Hong Kong churches will [keep] the status quo.”

Next steps

Now that you know, would you pray? Pray for perseverance and wisdom, Tsui requests. Pray believers can be “a beacon of hope in the midst of challenges.”

During the Cultural Revolution, “all the churches were being closed down… you thought it [was] the darkest period of time for the Chinese Church,” he continues. However, oppression had an unexpected outcome.

“The Church has not grown threefold [or] tenfold; the Church grew a hundredfold. I think we need to have that kind of perspective.”

Asian Access develops, equips, and multiplies local leaders throughout Asia, transforming individual lives and communities. Learn more about their work here.

Header image depicts Hong Kong protestors in July 2019. Photo credit doctorho via Flickr/CreativeCommons2.0.

The situation is changing in China. Restrictions have been tightening, old laws are being enforced more regularly, and it seems that religious freedom is in more limited supply. The latest report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom calls China a “country of particular concern.”

“There’s a continuum of freedom in the sense that sometimes there’s more and sometimes there’s less,” Curry says. “They’ve never had complete religious freedom to go where they want and decide what they want to read and choose their faith and follow it through without any sort of obstruction. That hasn’t happened in China in a good long time.”

The Aftermath of Tiananmen Square

Curry does think that the events of Tiananmen Square temporarily changed things for Christians.

“We saw the flourishing of Christianity under intense pressure,” he explains. “The underground church flourished and grew under that pressure because they stayed connected and they stayed focused centrally on the Scripture.”

This, in turn, triggered a temporary and cautious lax in regulation enforcement by Chinese officials.

“The Chinese government eventually began to look around and go, ‘Hey, this is helping our society. Their Christian faith is developing good citizens,’ Curry says. “The communist structure had no moral underpinning; that’s why you have so much corruption in China and so many of these type of issues of immorality and drugs and gangsterism and so forth, so they allowed Christianity to flourish for a season.”

Chinese Religious Freedom Today

Photo courtesy of Open Doors USA

So what changed? According to Curry, restrictions are tightening again “largely because of their capacity for surveillance within the country at this stage.”

But it’s more than just a newfound capability to monitor the population. Some officials are worried that Christians aren’t “Chinese” enough and will choose their religion over their nationality.

“They’ve looked around and said, ‘Wait a minute, there are more Christians than there are members of the Communist Party; we have a problem. We’re going to have to bring the Christian movement to heal under our government viewpoint, under the communist government viewpoint.’”

In other words, this push for nationalism seeks to make the Church “a Christian-second Chinese-first movement.”

Something Old or Something New?

Some sources say these regulations are old rules that are simply being enforced for the first time, while others argue that these are brand new restrictions. So which is it?

Curry says the confusion comes from the fact that, well, it’s both.

“Here’s one example; they have used zoning rules to tear down churches and saying, ‘They don’t have a permit to put this cross up. They don’t have a permit to build the church.’ Well, that’s not untrue, but what it fails to mention is that nobody in that city might have a permit for any building because that’s not the way that was done when the city was constructed.”

In other words, “They’re using the laws available to them to pick on Christian churches in a unique way.”

That being said, the aforementioned better surveillance is a new factor and one that allows stricter enforcement of regulations.

“China has this ability to track Christians and their behavior, and most of their citizens, through facial recognition, are now keeping a social score,” Curry says. They’re saying ‘Here’s what we consider a good citizen’ and… the fear is that they’re going to put those two lists together and say, ‘you know, we don’t think Christians are good citizens.’”

Photo courtesy of Open Doors USA

Because the Church puts God above every king or ruler, it’s possible that Christians could start be considered “less than ideal citizens and withhold food, withhold jobs, withhold all kinds of things from them.”

This isn’t all hypothetical; Christians are feeling the impact of these new regulations as we speak.

“We had a church closed down in September, the Zion Church in Beijing, because they refused to put CCTV cameras on the pulpit so that they could use facial recognition to see who’s in church today,” Curry says. “They’ve arrested pastors and put them in jail in solitary confinement to they call out this kind of behavior.”

The rules are old, but “the capacity to follow Christians and to exert pressure on then in a way that we hadn’t seen before” is brand new.

Impact on the Muslim Community

Christians aren’t the only ones suffering from a changing situation, though their larger population percentage makes them a bigger target. Muslims have run into new restrictions, too.

“Up in the northwest part of the country of China, you have the [Muslim] Uygher population,” Curry explains. “They’ve been historically Muslim, and in China, they’re ethnically different than the larger population.”

After 9/11, concerns about terrorism from extremists plagued the world, and China took precautionary steps. Their approaches, however, resulted in the marginalization of most of China’s Muslim population.

“What they’ve done is ratchet up pressure on the entire Muslim population there in the northwest in the hope of limiting the access of religious expression of Islamic followers,” Curry says. “[They’re] imprisoning them in large numbers and so forth the way they’re doing to Christians on a massive scale.”

Photo courtesy of Open Doors USA

Prayer for the Chinese Church

The best solution to the Chinese Church’s uncertainty is prayer.

“We don’t need to think of China as so immature that we must do everything for them; we have to pray for them,” Curry clarifies. “We need to speak out and call out as Christians here in America.”

Open Doors USA has resources and information to help you pray specifically for this situation as it unfolds, but in the meantime, you can pray for courage and wisdom.

“We need to pray for boldness for the Christian Church in China, for the leaders, for the pastors, and for the individuals to speak up and said, ‘We’re not going to. That’s not right. We’re not going to allow that to happen. We’re put Jesus first, we’re going to be good citizens, but we’re not going to answer to China for theology for what we preach.’”

Header photo courtesy of Open Doors USA

Between June 3 and 4, 1989, unknown thousands of Chinese citizens died at the hands of armed military forces. As recounted here, soldiers had been ordered to clear Beijing’s Tiananmen Square of protestors “by whatever means necessary.” Documents released by China’s government place the death toll between 200 and 300, but BBC News reports 10,000 people perished.

Following the incident in Tiananmen Square, China’s government warmed to Christianity because they saw how it helped society. “The Communist structure had…no moral underpinning… so, they (government officials) allowed Christianity to flourish for a season,” says David Curry of Open Doors USA.

“Now, you see a great tightening of restrictions in a way that we haven’t seen before, largely because of their capacity for surveillance.”

The changing face of persecution in China

As described here by Open Doors USA on its World Watch List, China is the 27th most difficult place in the world to be a Christian:

The management of religious affairs in China lies with the Communist Party now, not just with the government. And Christians are intensely and increasingly feeling this shift and fear of Christian persecution. Since the Communist Party took over, the implementation of the regulations on religion, the treatment of religious groups, especially Christians, became much harsher across the country.

(Image screenshot courtesy of ChinaAid)

Typically, persecution looks like this: government officials use “the available laws to restrict Christians [and] to ‘pick on’ Christian churches,” Curry explains.

Chinese authorities previously used zoning regulations to tear down church buildings, he describes as an example. Officials in some locations refused to let believers put up crosses or build churches because they lacked the proper permits.

“Well, that’s not untrue,” says Curry regarding the permits. “But, what it fails to mention is that nobody in that city might have a permit for any building, because that’s not the way that was done… when the city was constructed.”

Recent developments are more tech-savvy.

“China has this ability to track Christians and their behavior…. They’re now keeping a social score,” he states. More about China’s “social score” and “social credit” here.

“At some point in time, the fear is that they’re going to put those two lists together and say, ‘We don’t think Christians are good citizens.’ They could…withhold food, withhold jobs, withhold all kinds of things from them.”

(Photo courtesy of Open Doors USA)

Ask the Lord to protect His followers in China. “We need to pray for boldness for the Christian Church in China — for the leaders, for the pastors, for the individuals,” Curry adds.

“I’d like to see every church every Sunday praying for the persecuted Church. I think that’s our responsibility.”

Header image: A seal on a closed church in the Guangdong province in China – one of the multiple churches closed over the last year throughout China. (Photo courtesy of China Aid; photo and caption obtained via the Open Doors USA blog).

"20 years ago, hundreds of Chinese peaceful protesters,
students and citizens in Beijing,
were massacred by the Chinese military for their peaceful protest for
anti-corruption, democracy, and human rights," said Bob Fu, president of China
Aid Association. 

Although the Chinese government claimed that only 200-300
people died in the "June 4^th Incident," the Chinese Red Cross
estimated that about 2,000-3,000 people actually died. Many more people escaped from the country or
went to prison, and the government executed more than 10,000 people for their
involvement in the protests. 

The result was widespread despair and disillusionment among
the leaders of the student movement, including Bob Fu. 

"I was a junior in my college years in 1989," he explained. "And
of course I was very, very disappointed — shocked — when we learned that the
Chinese People's Army shot its own people… But during that time I came to the
Lord and was born again. So that's the
direct result of that bloody massacre."

The government investigated Fu for his role in the protests,
and eventually he managed to flee to the United
States, where he founded China Aid to promote religious
freedom and respect for human dignity in China. 

Back in China,
the Tiananmen Square massacre resulted in a
revival of interest in the Christian faith. 

"God brought redemption from that
tragedy," Fu explained. "After 1989,
the Gospel in China had
reached to many, many, many Chinese intellectuals: students, professors,
writers, lawyers… Hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals came to know
Christ after the student movement. And even today, the revival continues
in the urban areas and the universities in China." 

Today, every university in China has a Bible study group —
sometimes even hundreds of Bible study groups, Fu said. However, Chinese Christians still suffer from
severe persecution. 

"Pray for continued protection for those hundreds of
Christian pastors who are still in jail and labor camps and Chinese gulag," Fu requested. "So many churches are still
being raided, and some are still suffering from religious persecution; there are 100,000 political prisoners, too. So continue to pray for those prisoners, for their family members, and
for continuing spiritual revival in China." 

Together with other former student leaders, Fu will testify
on the human rights situation in China at the Tom Lantos Human
Rights Commission in Congress on Tuesday afternoon. On Thursday, June 4, a special service at the
National Presbyterian Church in Washington,
D.C. will commemorate the
massacre. 

At the "Repentance, Reconciliation and Re-formation: Re-commissioned After
Twenty Years" prayer service, Chinese Christians and former leaders of the
student movement will reaffirm a manifesto they signed recently, calling for
truth, forgiveness, and restitution for the violent events in Tiananmen
Square.

"Prayer transcends history, politics and nationalities.
On the day of the 20th anniversary of the June 4th Massacre, this historic
international prayer gathering calls for repentance for apathy and silence before
injustice, for reconciliation and re-formation for a higher calling," Fu said. 

The manifesto calls on Christians to repent of apathy toward
the massacre and seek the truth about what happened. It also calls on the Chinese government to
take responsibility for its actions, repent of the incident, compensate the
victims, and allow exiles to return to the country. Fu said that Christians should pray for the
political situation in China. 

"China
is really at a crossroads," he said. "They
can either…become a more hard-line dictatorship for a nation led by
atheists who worship the dragon, and become a threat to the peace of the
world, or have the choice to be encouraged to become a nation that worships
the Lamb and be a peacemaker to the world."

To learn more about Thursday's event, click here.